Get Sparked, Paper and Flash Fiction

It would be an understatement to say that I am stoked about this upcoming Get Sparked! round. The last round I was in (and my first), I'm going to take as a learning experience, getting a feel for how the whole process works. I didn't really get to know, or feel a real connection to my partner. This time around is different. I've been paired up with a paper maker! She makes paper from domestically grown plant fibers, waste paper, and fabric in her own micro-mill out of her house. How awesome is that?

This is a fact that I don't get to put out very often, but I absolutely love the look and feel of homemade paper. I have a leather-bound book that my BFF Tim got me when he was in Iraq, and the paper inside is so soft and luscious, I haven't written a word in it because I feel like anything I put in it would mar its beauty. I do have to admit that I feel that way about any bound book of blank paper. It all seems so permanent. I've always preferred to write in spiral-bound notebooks (wide-rule, not college-rule) because if I didn't like something, I wouldn't feel bad about ripping it out or scribbling all over the page. But a bound book with a real spine, brimming with deliciously blank pages... Ahh, that is a delicacy I haven't yet had the nerve to taste, though I've grown quite the collection.

At any rate, I have until Wednesday to put my poetry hat on and blast out something stupendous for my paper-maker partner to make something equally stupendous from. I can't lie; I am really excited about this!

I also have to add that I am extremely happy with the responses I've gotten from my first flash fiction submission! Admittedly it's not my greatest piece of writing, but for the amount of time I actually spent working on it, and knowing beforehand most of the points that would most likely get 'nitpicked,' I have to be careful not to feel overly confident in it. There were only 3 or 4 other stories in my group posted, and they were all pretty fantastic. Which means there are potentially 15 other stories that are even better than what I've seen.

I am a little bit nervous about the scoring system. The top 15 ranked stories in each group will be scored between 1-25 points (1st gets 25, 2nd gets 22, etc.). So the bottom 5 stories get zilch. If I don't get points, it means I really sucked. I don't want to suck! At least for the Short Story contest if you didn't make the top 3, you didn't know if you were the next best or the worst. This one you know exactly where you rank. Despite that, though, I can't shake the confidence I feel right now. It's more than what I felt during the Short Story contest, so I'm just taking that as a good sign, and I will hopefully do even better with the next assignment. More than 3 more weeks to deliberate on that one, though, and school will distract me a bit.